


Double Denim

by darkandstormyslash



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Bad Parenting, Billy is gay I'm running with that, Canon-Typical Behavior, Irresponsible Driving, M/M, Spoilers for Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:34:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23012578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkandstormyslash/pseuds/darkandstormyslash
Summary: Some one-shots that came to mind while watching Stranger Things season 2 centered around Billy Hargrove.Chapter 1: Neil and Billy - whose fault is it they left California?Chapter 2: Billy drives too fast and thinks about SteveChapter 3: Flashback to a 14 year old Billy starting to learn some thingsChapter 4: How Billy got home end of S2 and what happened afterwardsChapter 5: Hopper and Billy at the police station
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 38
Kudos: 42





	1. Whose fault is that?

“You're right.” Neil’s voice is soft, but somehow more deadly for it. “You are stuck here. And whose fault is that?”

Billy can feel the tension in his shoulders. It always starts there, building and twisting until it drops unpleasantly down to his gut. He shouldn’t have started this, and he particularly shouldn’t have started it in his bedroom because there’s only one exit, and Neil is standing in front of it. The tension between them now is a living thing, sparking and laughing unpleasantly. God but he hates feeling weak.

“Yours.” Billy mutters under his breath, but he can tell within a second that it’s not as far under his breath as he thought it was. He can tell without  _ looking _ , because he’s not looking at his father, he’s staring determinedly at the opposite wall. The tension between them shifts, almost audibly, and Billy knows he's been heard. He can hear his heart, thumping unpleasantly loud somewhere under his vest, and he hopes that Neil can't hear it.

His hands curl into fists against his sides.

“What did you say?” Neil’s voice doesn’t rise but he steps closer. That’s when Billy makes the mistake of looking up, catching his father’s eyes, and he has to immediately look away. 

The tension finally drops down into his gut and he feels a wash of nauseous fear, the fists at his sides are trembling, half uncurling, looking for something to do that will salvage the situation. “Nothing.”

“Did you say it's my fault?”

_ Yes _ . Billy wants to scream at him,  _ Yes it’s your fault. You sold our house in California, you dragged us down here, you, you, you, it’s all your fault.  _ “No.”

“You know whose fault it is.“ Neil’s close enough to touch him now but he doesn’t. Just crosses his arms and fixes Billy with that look, the one that makes him feel like a six year old again and not in a pleasant way. “Say it.”

It’s Max’s fault for blabbing, Susan’s fault for existing, the California state police’s fault for happening to be down that alleyway at that time. And deep, deep down Billy knows it’s his fault, for being the queer little screwup son that he is.

“Billy. Say it.”

“My fault.” He mutters at the floor. Neil’s hand raises with a warning finger and Billy flinches, then hates himself for flinching.

“I can’t hear you Billy. Say it.”

The words choke their way out of him, “It’s my fault, Sir.”

“It is your fault Billy.” Neil looks around the room, shaking his head at the pile of clothes on the floor. One foot nudges at Billy’s discarded denim jacket. “And clean your room, it’s a mess in here.”

Billy waits until his father has left. Waits until the sound of the television filters up from downstairs. It’s only then that he grabs at his jacket in a rage and flings it towards the wall. Tears are damp on his cheeks and he wants to punch them away. Fuck but he  _ hates _ being weak.

_ Your fault! _ He wants to scream,  _ It’s your fault, it’s your fault, it’s YOUR FAULT _ .

If he screams it loud enough, he might even convince himself it’s true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've only just started season 2 but I know most of the major plot points. And knowing what happens I found the scene with Max and Billy in the car fascinating. Those words just seemed 100% like Neil's - so I wrote Neil saying them. 
> 
> I did deliberately make Billy cave in the end, even though Max never does. She is much stronger than him.


	2. Driving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy thinks about Steve. Carol gets bored.

Is there anything better, Billy thinks, than a fast car, a pretty girl, and a sunny day? This afternoon the clouds have mysteriously cleared, and the Camero is racing along a deserted road. Billy doesn’t even know where he’s driving only that he’s doing it fast.

Carol is sitting in the passenger seat next to him. She laughs each time he skids around a turn, but slightly self consciously, glancing at Billy to make sure he sees her laughing. He doesn’t care. His mind is comfortably numb, there’s a cigarette in his mouth, and an ache in his tit from Steve Harrington’s sharp little elbows at basketball practice. Billy hopes it doesn’t bruise, he’s vain enough not to want the marks and besides, he doesn't want to think that soft-pastel little Harrington is strong enough for it.

“Are we going anywhere?” Carol asks, sounding bored. 

Billy ignores her, revving a little harder on the ignition as he thinks of Steve Harrington. It’s not Billy’s first time moving school and by now he knows how to survive - find the biggest bastard in the school, challenge them and defeat them. But he can’t seem to find a way to do that with Steve. He’d thought winning the keg-king might do it, and he’d stormed up to Harrington that evening drunk on beer and ready for a fight, for a challenge, for  _ something _ . Instead of the big arrogant class king he’d been expecting, he was faced with a soft little mommas-boy with hair like a sixties housewife who’d lowered his glasses and given Billy a look of deep, deep incomprehension.

Of all the responses he’d expected, sheer  _ confusion _ had not been one of them.

Now Billy is stuck. He keeps trying to find ways to topple this king, and each time he keeps running up against a sheer unbreakable wall, not of strength but of apathy. He can’t work it out. Keg-king, basketball champion, most eligible teen bachelor - Billy has claimed all of them, and it bothers him that he can’t seem to get Harrington to care.

Maybe he should just try and bang Steve’s girlfriend. But Nancy Wheeler looks like hard work and besides, from what he’s heard someone else has already fought Steve for her and pretty much won. Maybe Harrington isn’t the one he should be concentrating on.

“Who was that kid?” He asks, interrupting whatever Carol was talking about. “The one who took Harrington’s girlfriend home?”

Her face drops into a frown, “Byers?”

“Yeah, he’s the one that beat Harrington up, right?”

“Well … yeah.” Carol is clearly uninterested in this conversation, but Billy doesn’t care. “Like, a year ago. He was stalking Nancy, then they were together, except they weren’t. Now I guess they are again.” She rolls her eyes and blows hair out of her face. “I told Steve she was a slut.”

“She doesn’t look like a slut.”

Carol gives him a world-weary look, “They never do, Billy, they never do.”

He smirks, “You do.”

The Camero skids and screeches as she slaps his arm, her hand lingering a little longer on the warm tanned skin than maybe it needs to. “You take that back!”

Billy gives a bite in her direction, causing the Camero to skid again, “So do I need to take on this Byers?”

“What? No. He’s a freak.”

Privately, Billy thinks everyone in Hawkins is a freak, but he keeps that to himself for now. No need to sour the mood of what is otherwise a perfectly fun flirtation between friends. He wonders if he could get Carol to blow him, and what Tommy would say if he found out. 

“Steve is just …  _ nothing _ .” Carol sighs, flipping her sunglasses down from her head over her eyes. “Not anymore. Not since he started fucking Nancy.”

It would be easier, Billy thinks, if that were true. If Steve really was nothing, then Billy could ignore him. But Steve is under his skin now, an irritating itch that refuses to go away, a challenge that runs on strange incomprehensible rules, a puzzle that he can’t solve. 

He’ll find a way. Even if he has to crowbar it open with his _bare hands_ , he’ll find a way...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entire chapter is based around the phrase: "an ache in his tit from Steve Harrington’s sharp little elbows" which came into my head and wouldn't go away.


	3. Some types of people

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING while there's no outright violence or even bad language in this chapter there is an underlying current of deep homophobic nastiness and self-hatred. If you, like me, went through some variation of This Talk as a kid it might be tough to revisit.

The way grownups think, Billy has worked out by the age of 14, is that if a kid does something wrong, and you punish the kid, they make the link between the bad action and the punishment. He guesses it makes a certain kind of sense. Maybe for some kids it even works, maybe some kids have a brain that isn’t screwed up, or a father who isn’t always angry, or a mom who didn’t run away because of how screwed up they were.

The only link Billy has made is the one between punishments and his father. His actions, his behaviors, they bubble out of him uncontrollably in confusion and rage. He can’t  _ stop _ himself getting angry, and when he’s angry he can’t  _ stop _ himself lashing out. He knows, because Neil tells him, that his father is the same way. They’re stuck together, in a raging cycle of anger and destruction that somehow only seems to lead to Billy’s things getting broken.

This time though, this time is different. For starters, Billy can’t seem to work out what he’s done wrong. He’s had inappropriate friends before, friends who stop him concentrating at school, get him into fights, smoke stolen cigarettes with him on the beach playing hooky. But Christopher wasn’t that kind of friend, if anything he was a  _ good _ influence. Christopher did his work neatly in his books, always came to school on time, wore clean pressed clothes, and always brushed the adorable white-blond hair that hung in curtains around his face. When they sat together under the bleachers at school they were most usually working, Christopher refusing to let Billy copy his meticulously written class-work and instead insisting he did it himself.

Behavior that would, coming from anyone else, get them a slap in the face. With Christopher it just makes Billy laugh. He grabs his only unbroken pencil and shoves the messy mop of hair out of his eyes before trying, really trying, to form his words into some semblance of an answer.

He wants to try, for Christopher.

And now he’s in trouble.

Billy doesn’t know what he’s done wrong, or rather he knows, in some strange deep-down, half formed way, but he doesn’t understand it. Neil’s anger is different as well, usually he looks like he’s about to snap off the end of a fuse, now he looks like he’s already snapped and is having difficulty processing that. His hands are balled into fists and his voice is shaking.

“This is serious, do you understand me Billy?”

Billy nods, hoping that’s the right answer. This isn’t about something that he’s done, he’s dimly aware, it’s about something more insidious. More terrifying. This is about something he  _ is _ . Something about the calm hot buzzing summer days under the bleachers with Christopher is inherently twisted and wrong. The feeling it gave him, the dizzying sort of happiness, the rushed breath of enjoyment, that’s wrong as well. 

Neil steps forward and grasps his shoulders, surprisingly gently. There‘s genuine worry in his eyes, and that is the most terrifying thing of all. “There are a certain type of people in this world, Billy, that you need to stay away from. Do you understand me?”

He doesn’t. He doesn’t, and he does, and he doesn’t want to. He wants to hear Christopher laughing again and get him pop rocks from the store - buy them, not steal them. Neil’s eyes glare into his and his stomach twists at the thought of it. Something about this is wrong, and it’s scaring even his father.

Neil’s hands grip harder at his shoulders. “That kid is one of them Billy. I want you to stay away from him, understand?”

Another nod, and this time Neil gives his shoulders a shake. “I said, do you understand!”

“Yes Sir.” Billy whispers. Usually, when his father forbids him from doing something his thoughts immediately fly to how to do it, but this time is different. This time it feels like something very, very, wrong has happened, worse than flipping off teachers, or getting into fights, or even stealing. This is something deep-down. Something  _ bad _ .

“You stay away from him, you hear me?”

“Yes Sir” it comes out a bit louder this time. Billy’s eyes are wide and confused. His father lets him go and, to his surprise, ruffles his hair gently.

“Good boy. I know you don’t … know you wouldn’t …” Neil pauses with difficulty to breathe and Billy watches in nervous confusion as his father manages to calm himself down. “Hey, you know that Taylor girl? Lauren?”

“Lori.” Billy answers slowly, eyes still wary, heart still jumping.

“Do you two want to go to the movies or something this weekend?” Neil takes a breath and manages to twitch his lips into something that's almost a smile. “I can drive you there, give you some money for popcorn, how about it?”

This isn’t a punishment. Billy isn’t sure what the hell it is. It scares him and confuses him all at once, but he doesn’t get out to the movies much. “Sure.”

That weekend, he goes to the movies with Lori Taylor, holds her hand in the back row, and kisses her when the end credits roll. He gets a slap on the face when he slips his tongue awkwardly and inelegantly into her mouth, and feels a flush of satisfaction at the sting it leaves behind. The next week the whole school is talking about how Lori and Billy did S-E-X in the cinema and mysteriously Billy doesn’t get into trouble.

He sees the way the kids at school treat Christopher. The names they call him. The things they say.

He makes the link, and he stays away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am addicted to giving Billy's dialogue to Neil.
> 
> The way I'm feeling about Billy and Neil right now is basically "Just Like You" by Three Days Grace: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04fQTmvFfGo


	4. You didn’t see shit, Harrington

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a whole headcanon for what happened to Billy at the end of season 2 and then for some unknown reason decided to write it from the POV of Steve Harrington, who saw none of it.

The demodogs are gone, the evil is defeated, the gate is closed. Steve Harrington is bone tired and aching, covered in the smell of gasoline fumes and bad broken earth. The backwash of adrenaline manages to hit its exhausting peak right as he pulls the Camero into the Byers’s driveway, just before he staggers inside and finds Billy Harrington still semi-conscious on the living-room floor.

This is going to be … interesting to explain.

The kids crowd in after him, almost tripping over him, Billy and each other in a stumbling mess of confusion. Billy doesn’t look good, but he also doesn’t look bad enough that he’ll forget what he’s seen. He’s far too functional for the obvious solution, which would be to simply tip him into the trunk of the Camero and drive him home. Not forgetting the problem, of course, of who the hell is going to drive.

“I can take us home.” Max insists impatiently. 

“No.” Steve vetoes instantly. “I’ve seen you drive. I’ll drive you both home.”

“If you drive us, how will _you_ get home?”

The situation only becomes more awkward when Hopper arrives. Hopper has El with him, who needs to stay hidden, and looks even more exhausted than Steve feels. Billy is staggering around the Byers kitchen with a damp cloth over one eye, colliding with the cupboards and insisting he can still drive. Max is a scowling heap of indignation, Mike is going frantic trying to get out to see El, and Steve has almost reached the limit of what he can deal with.

“I’ll take them both home in the police van.” Hopper snaps. “They can pick up the damn car tomorrow.”

The loud and urgent “No!” from Max is followed by an equally urgent if slightly more slurred “No” from Billy. 

The compromise they end up with involves Steve driving the Camero, with Billy manhandled into the passenger seat and Max in the back. Hopper trails them at a polite distance with the police van, so he can drive Steve home before returning to collect El from the relieved and grateful arms of Mike Wheeler. It all seems like a lot of effort for one fucking annoying Californian douchebag. When they reach the house, Steve is half tempted to park the Camero inside the mailbox out of spite, but he honestly just wants to get as far away from Hargrove right now as possible. 

Billy is uncharacteristically silent all the way back. It’s not until Steve yanks up the parking break that he speaks, voice rough and slow. “Does it show?”

“Does what show?”

“Does it show that I’ve had a fucking needle in my neck.”

Of all the things to worry about, that doesn’t seem to Steve to be a massive priority. It’s on the tip of his tongue to snap back that he doesn’t give a shit but Max answers instead, “It doesn’t show anything. You just look like you’ve been in a fight.”

Billy tips his head back against the seat and closes his eyes.

“Okay,” Max continues, “So the story is, I was at the arcade. The guy stayed open late so I could rack up a high score. You came and found me, and got into a fight with him for not sending me home. Okay?”

“You think they’ll believe that?” Billy answers, voice still slow and drugged and lazy. It suddenly occurs to Steve that there’s no realistic way for Billy to hide that he’s under the influence of something. He can barely walk, let alone talk. A story about late-night arcade sessions probably isn’t going to stand up. He’s not about to raise this as an issue though, because compared to what he’s just been through it seems mind-numbingly unimportant what story Billy Hargrove tells his dad.

“If we both stick to the same story, they’ll have to.”

Steve reaches past Billy to unlock the door and push it as far open as he can. “Good, you have a story. Now fuck off and let me get home.”

As soon as Billy is out, Steve scoots away as fast as he can. When he turns back to look Billy is at the front door, leaning against Max’s shoulder. She unlocks the door and a light comes on somewhere upstairs in the house, followed swiftly by one downstairs. Steve can hear a man’s voice, raised, “What kind of time do you call-” and then the door shuts behind them leaving silence.

Something about it makes Steve feel strangely uncomfortable. He puts it down to frayed nerves and fatigue. Hopper is waiting a few yards back down the road and Steve sinks gratefully into the police van with a groan.

“Everything okay?” Hopper asks, pulling away from the side. Steve nods. They drive in silence for a while and then Hopper clears his throat awkwardly.

“Thanks for, well, for looking out for the kids tonight. You did good.”

“I got my ass handed to me by Hargrove then dragged out by a bunch of pre-teens to fight a Nazi-creature from another dimension.” Steve manages. He tries to crack a smile but his face is starting to really throb now. “I could’ve done better.”

“Could have done a lot worse.” Hopper gives him a sideways glance. “Your folks going to be okay? If you need me to come in and give some excuse…?”

“It’s fine.” Steve leans back exhausted.

“Well if that punk gives you any more trouble, let me know okay? I’ve got a few nice comfy jail cells he could spend some time in.”

This time, Steve does manage a smile. “Yeah I’ll let you know.”

“You do that.”

It’s so late when he finally gets home that it’s almost morning. Steve slips in the back door, staggers up to his room, and manages approximately three hours of restless sleep before his alarm rings for school. He spends as much time in the shower as he thinks he can get away with and thankfully, when he does get downstairs, his mother has a convulsive fit at the sight of his face and drags him immediately to hospital. Steve isn’t sure he really needs to go, but he’s in favour of keeping a good 24 hours between other-dimensional Nazi-creatures and math class.

When he gets into school the next day the rumour has already spread that Billy Hargrove and Steve Harrington got into a fight over either Billy’s car, or drugs, or both. Billy, thankfully, ignores him all day, and Steve notices with a fair amount of pride that Billy’s face looks even worse than he remembers leaving it. Clearly the fight wasn’t quite as one-sided as Dustin made it out to be. Billy seems strangely subdued despite being the obvious winner.

Steve manages to grab Max after school as she heads out to the car. “Hey, Max. You get home okay the other day? Not in too much trouble?”

“Trouble?” She raises her eyebrows, “Oh we are in trouble. I’m grounded for two weeks, and mom took away my skateboard.”

“And Billy?” Steve isn’t sure why he asks.

“Billy is grounded for like a month. We might have scratched the Camero driving the other night.” She chews at the edge of her thumbnail. “Neil was pissed. There was … a lot of shouting.”

“Good, good.” Steve nods absently, glancing out to the carpark. He can just about make out the Camero, but Billy is either staying inside it or not yet out. He can see a fair few dings from Max’s driving, but it’s probably no bad thing if Billy is blaming Steve for it. “He’s not, uh, not taking it out on you or anything?”

“Nope. I think he got the message.”

That’s one thing to be thankful for at least. Billy has been ignoring him, but in such an obvious and purposeful way that it feels like stepping around an unexploded bomb. It doesn’t seem possible for Billy to have gone from a towering font of continuous rage into the quiet, glowering thing he is now. Any minute, Steve thinks, the fuse will snap and Billy will go off.

It’s even more obvious during basketball, when Billy’s ignoring of him goes far enough that he simply refuses to approach Steve whenever he has the ball. As soon as Steve’s team realises this Steve finds he’s being passed the ball a lot more often, so often he starts to wish Billy would just go back to normal. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” Tommy yells at Billy as they break for half time. “Bring him down, you’re losing us the damn game!”

There’s a short, quiet, and terrifying moment when Billy stares Tommy in the eyes and Steve holds his breath, then Billy’s hand reels back and slaps forward. It’s an actual slap, Steve notices with horrified shock; open-handed, sharp and focused enough to send Tommy staggering across the entire width of the basketball court clutching his face and yelping. 

The coach rushes over frantically blowing his whistle. Billy spends the rest of the lesson sat on the bench. 

After the first week it becomes less awkward, after the second he’s almost used to it. By then, the rumours have died down, Steve’s face is back to normal, and Max is no longer grounded which means all of the kids are spending a lot more time at the arcade. The traditional end-of-year school dance is looming for the younger kids, the prospect of actually having to study for examinations for the older kids, and somehow Steve can’t bring himself to properly care about either. He feels trapped in some strange sort of limbo where the things he cares about, the things that give him nightmares, seem very far detached from the things that everyone seems to want him to care about. Seeing Nancy and Byers together, holding hands or smiling over some book, that still gives him a pang. It hurts more than he expected, not least because he’s starting, finally, to understand what Nancy was feeling back in October. Just too late to be able to share it with her. 

When December rolls around, he drops Dustin off at the Snow Ball, gives the kid a pep talk, then bums around in town until it’s time to pick him up. He doesn’t want to keep the engine running and it’s too damn cold to sit with it off, so he parks around the back and slopes towards the temporary awning for some cover. There’s someone else there with the same idea and it isn’t until he’s too close to back away that Steve realises, with a certain amount of dread, that it’s Billy Hargrove.

He slows, but it’s cold and Steve thinks he’ll be damned if he turns around and walks back to the car. Instead he huddles under the awning and determinedly ignores Billy, who stares at him with narrowed eyes. 

The silence between them grows and grows until Steve doesn’t think he can stand it any longer. His voice when it comes out seems to have a strange fake forced-cheerful quality, like his mom when she entertains his father’s work colleagues, “Hargrove. You picking up your sister?”

Billy’s lip curls but he doesn’t answer. 

“She’s probably dancing with Lucas.” Steve ploughs on. Part of him, he knows, is choosing the words on purpose to rile Billy up. Sure enough, he can see Hargrove twitch out of the corner of his eye, “They get on pretty well together.”

Still silence. But it’s a distinctly different flavour of silence.

“You know, if you want me to drop her back home some evenings from the arcade, there’s no reason why I couldn’t-” and that’s the point where Billy snaps, stepping forward so quickly that Steve finds himself automatically taking a step back.

“The deal was,” Billy growls at him through gritted teeth, “That I was to leave her friends alone. She didn’t specify if you were included in that, Harrington. I made the charitable assumption that you were. Don’t make me change my mind.”

Steve meets his eyes and doesn’t look away. “There’s no reason we can’t get on, Hargrove.”

“Yeah well the difference between us, Harrington, is I don’t want to _get on_ with you.” It’s said with a sting and a sneer, “So why don’t we just go back to hating each other for the final term before we can both fuck off out of this shitty little school, hmm?”

There are a few shocked minutes of silence as Steve works out the full insinuation of that comment. “What the fuck, man?”

Billy takes a long angry inhale of his cigarette and blows the smoke up towards the awning, “You heard.”

“I don’t, fuck Hargrove, whatever the hell you think of me, don’t think _that_.” Steve snaps back, “I was never trying to get into your sister’s pants and I’m sure as hell not trying to get into yours.”

This silence is a hundred times worse, and Steve suddenly wishes he’d run back to the car as soon as he noticed Billy. Sighing, he wraps his arms around himself and steps out, ready to leave and dignity be damned. “Whatever, man. Think what you like. You don’t have to hate me just because I saw you get your ass handed to you by your sister.”

Billy gives a snarl, angry and frustrated, “You didn’t see shit Harrington. Don’t even _think_ about ever turning up at my house.”

Steve doesn’t bother looking back. He scoots back to his car, drives round to the front of the school, and lets the heater run down the tank until the kids are finally ready to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kind of want to write this again from Billy's point of view. Or even better Neil's.


	5. Strong arm of the law

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hopper and Billy at the police station

“You don’t need to tell my dad.” Hopper’s used to hearing it from the teenagers that end up hauled to the station, but not quite like this. Usually it’s pleading or desperate, a last ditch attempt at getting away with whatever mischief they’ve been up to which has gotten out of their control. This is different. This is Billy Hargrove, staring at him with a pair of startlingly blue eyes that aren’t pleading so much as threatening. The words are said quiet. Low. Like the person saying them doesn’t quite believe they’re going to make any difference. It’s certainly worlds away from the teenagers he usually has in here; Steve my-dad-will-kill-me Harrington, or Jonathan my-mum-will-freak-out Byers. 

“You know I’ll have to call him.” He answers.

The mouth turns up into a sneer. “You don’t  _ have _ to.”

Kid isn’t exactly helping himself here.

He lifts the phone slowly, watching the tanned jawline twitch and clench. The kid’s been such a pain in the ass during the whole half-hour Hopper’s had to deal with him, he’s half tempted just to go ahead and drop him in it. Clearly the boy knew there would be consequences, maybe it’s no bad thing to make him face them. He’s seen the Hargrove boy around a few times; loud and brash and mostly topless. He doesn’t look like someone who has anything to be afraid of, doesn’t look anything like Jonathan did, back when Lonnie Byers was still around. Back then, Jonathan wore long sleeve shirts that covered his arms, and turtleneck sweaters that covered his neck. Flinching away from touches, with eyes that darted around a room before settling. Billy didn’t flinch at any point when they pulled him over, dragged him to the station, or called Hopper over to yell at him. He doesn’t act like a kid who lives his life tiptoeing around in fear.

But if Hopper believes in anything, he believes in second chances. He pauses before he starts to dial and meets Billy’s eyes. “You want to tell me why I don’t have to?”

Billy’s eyebrows raise. A tongue darts out across his lower lip and Hopper wonders just what he’s going to come out with. Clearly not the truth, nobody spends this long thinking of the truth.

“Because it’s none of his business.” Is what he finally comes out with. “My car, my fine. I’ll pay it.”

“You think I’m just going to let you drive back home, the speed you’ve been going?”

Billy takes a breath, deep and shuddering. His eyes give one last glare of defiance and then slowly drop to the ground. To Hoppers complete and utter surprise, his next words almost sound contrite. “I’ve learnt my lesson, Sir.”

It should sound sarcastic. It doesn’t. It’s an act, clearly, Billy was mad enough to spit five minutes ago and Hopper is damn sure that kind of boiling rage doesn’t clear up after a few moments of quiet thought. He’s seen plenty of sorry-acts before though, and this, he has to admit, is a damn good one.

“I won’t do it again.” Billy’s eyes flicker briefly up and then, when Hopper steps forward, he finally sees what he’s been waiting for. A momentary lapse, a tremble in the otherwise un-crackable facade. He rests his arm against the side of the wall, next to Billy’s head, and the kids eyes flicker straight to it in terrified fear.

He knows that look. He’s seen it more in New York - a big violent city, full of crazy delinquents brought up bad. He doesn’t need this kind of thing here, but he also doesn’t need a crazy Californian punk tearing the place up with a car too loud and dangerous for a small quiet town. Billy knows how to feel fear, knows how to act sorry, knows when he can get away with lashing out and when he’s about to receive it. He doesn’t like it big and mean, and Hopper can  _ do _ big and mean.

He pulls himself up to his full height, staring down into the kids eyes until he looks away. “You better not do it again, alright?”

“Yes Sir.”

“You go at that speed again, anywhere in my town, and I’m hauling your sorry ass in here for the night  _ and _ phoning your dad to haul it out again, understood?”

“Y-yes Sir.” It’s looking like less of an act by the second. Billy’s face is flushed, his eyes starting to redden. Hopper realizes with slight panic that the kid almost looks about to cry. Slowly, he steps back, and gives Billy an awkward pat on the shoulder. No flinch, but it’s a deliberate lack of movement, from someone whose clearly spent a lot of time specifically making sure that they won't move.

Hopper is suddenly incredibly glad he didn’t make the call. 

“Alright, piss off then.” He mutters, jerking his head towards the door and Billy Hargrove flings himself towards it, not even answering as Hopper yells after him, “And no more speeding!”

Kids. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am having way too much fun threatening Billy 
> 
> I also like calling him a punk because there are many meanings attached to the word 'punk' and Billy basically fits all of them XD


End file.
